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TechnoratiEarth's Natural Defenses against Climate Change 'Beginning to Fail'
The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research reveals today.
Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.
As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilizing the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it.
The news may give added urgency to the meeting in three weeks' time between the G8 group of rich nations and the leading developing countries led by China, at Heiligendamm in Germany, when an attempt will be made to put together the framework of a new world climate treaty to succeed the current Kyoto protocol.
"This is a timely warning in advance of Heiligendamm and the G8 that the climate clock is beginning to tick faster," said the leading environmentalist Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College London.
"The shift that has been detected in a four-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, published in the journal Science, is one of the most ominous in the development of climate change. It implies a breach in the planet's own defenses against global warming.
Human society has hugely benefited from the earth's natural carbon absorption facility, which means oceans and forests take up roughly half of the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, in the so-called carbon cycle. What is left in the atmosphere is known as the "airborne fraction".
If sinks weakened, the airborne fraction would be likely to get bigger. Although supercomputer models of the climate have for some time predicted the weakening of the ocean and terrestrial sinks, no example of it happening has actually been detected - until now.
Now the research team has found the vast Southern Ocean, which is the earth's biggest carbon sink, accounting for about 15 per cent of the total absorption potential, has become effectively CO2-saturated.
The level of the gas it is absorbing has remained static since 1981 - but in that time the amount emitted has grown by 40 per cent, so it has stopped keeping pace and much more CO2 is left over to trap the sun's heat.
The effect - revealed by scrutinizing observations of atmospheric CO2 from 40 stations around the world, is thought to have been caused by an increase in ocean wind speeds. Stormier weather and stronger waves are churning up the sea and bringing natural CO2 stored there closer to the surface - which reduces the ability of the surface to absorb the gas from the air.
The increased winds are believed to be caused by altered atmospheric temperature regimes produced by two separate processes - the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica by chlorofluorocarbon gases from aerosol spray cans (now phased out), and global warming.
It is thus a positive feedback - an effect of climate change which itself makes climate change worse. Some researchers fear that feedbacks may make global warming happen much faster, and harder to control, than generally appreciated. The pessimism of scientists such as James Lovelock is largely based on the fact that most feedbacks in the earth's system are likely to work against us.
"This is the first unequivocal detection of a carbon sink weakening because of recent climate change," said the lead author of the study, Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia. "This is serious. Whenever the world has greatly warmed in the past, the weakening of CO2 sinks has contributed to it."
Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons [millions of tons] of carbon emitted by humans. The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean is weakening is a cause for concern."
The Government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said: "We have quite a large number of positive feedbacks to worry about, and this appears to be another one. But the seriousness of it would depend on if it was affecting the whole ocean, or merely the Southern Ocean."
In recent years it has become clear that the rate at which CO2 was accumulating is itself increasing. The level currently stands at about 382 parts per million by volume (ppm), up from 315 ppm in 1958.
In the past decade the rate has jumped from about 1.6ppm annually to well above 2ppm - a fact which, as The Independent reported in October 2004, may well signal that the earth's absorption ability is shrinking.
Asked if this rate increase could now be linked to weakening sinks, Dr Le Quéré said: "I think we are just at the border of detecting that." She added: "All the carbon cycle experts have their eyes on it."
Saturations of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink due to recent climate change, Le Quéré et al, published this week in Science
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
42 Comments so far
Show AllEducation is key - see first message.
People aren't rioting in the streets for action because the denial industry has done such a great job. My daughter's high school chemistry teacher regularly rants about how the entire global warming crisis is a hoax perpetrated by Democrats to gain votes. Seriously. Apart from her and one other student, the entire class is like-minded. What do you do about that level of ignorance?
I must disagree with you MNBill, where you state we humans haven't been able to fix anything enviromental and us humans have little or no effect on the Earth.
Remember that quiet and thoughtful human who penned Silent Spring? Racheal Carson ALONE made a major impact of good upon everyone on the planet and upon the Earth. Humans have cleaned up waterways,ponds and lakes ETC.; unfortunately, not near enough has been done in that regard.
Another wonderful human? Jacques Cousteau. That man warned us in his 1979 book {The Ocean World} that unless we changed our ways, mankind and most animal life on Earth may likely have less than a hundred years. Few listened to his sensible advice. I for one listened, but SHAME on me, I too have not done enough to stop polluting Eath, the only place known for humanity to survive. "The Ocean World" is a book that should be required reading WORLD WIDE for every seventh and eight grader.
Humans CAN do something and time is rapidly running out. Chicken Little? No, reality!
All we have to do is see it with our own eyes. Personally, I believe it is already too late and maybe we could think about the advice given by anther writer here. Screw our neighbors mates and have a blast in Vegas. Well, at my age, my neighbor would have to be stupid or blind and I've already maxed out my credit card at the local gas stations. Seriously, we humans can do somethig productive in the area of the enviroment and for our grandkids and great grandkids sake, we must. Of course we would have to All pull togeather for any real good to transpire and I have no clue on how to ever see that come to pass. Anyone besides Al Gore have a clue?
No matter what we do now, we humans are a screwed species. We did it to ourselves and unfortunately to the innocent plant life and other animal species. We can look in the mirror and see the culprit. We have married our cars and jets and garbage. It serves us right when we choke on our own pollution - and drown in the melting glaciers we caused. It's the innocents that we should care about. We talk ad nauseum about what global warming will do to our coastal cities, our drought areas growing - blah blah blah we cry about what we are doing to ourselves. We blame - we point fingers - but we don't blame ourselves. If we humans really really cared we'd do something - but we don't - and we won't until the world makes us change. We are too much in love with ourselves to change on our own.
I already notice people are nicer to each other.
Cool head, I believe is correct in saying this is a natural phenomenon. I also believe we will see a flood of for profit solutions to the CO2 problem which is best solved by reducing fossil fuel use.
WE haven't been able to fix anything environmental with commercial products. In the words of the neo-con's "What makes us believe we can have an effect on the Earth?".
We are best to learn how to adapt to the coming changes.
Stan and Coolhead,
Whenever there is an emergency, like a blackout or flood, neighbors who otherwise pass on their way to work, suddenly begin to cooperate, using flashlights to direct traffic, or building sand bags, or whatever. They put aside competition for parking space to do whatever is needed for the neighborhood; and as global warming and its consequences get worse, that neighborhood cooperation will be the basis for any possible human survival. Then, as the social system fails and collapses, only the neighborhoods will remain, and they will have to grow their own food and do whatever else is necessary. Thus, people will desert the big cities looking for arable land, which may or may not be available. Hopefully, a cooperative system will be established in which everyone helps each other get through the day, the week, the month and year. But as time passes, only a smaller human population living in peace and balance with its environment will be able to survive into the future. Frankly, I doubt it can be done, but people surprise me all the time, especially the youngsters. Their creativity is amazing and heartening. There is hope, but only when we turn to each other as family, friends and neighbors.
There is NO DOUBT that gobal warming is affecting us all and will continue to do so for as long as the trend continues. Temperatures during the last 4 interglacials got up higher than where we're now, as much as two ceinti-degrees higher than 2004, the record average high so far. Chances are, sorry if this is not a "common dream", that the warming is more natural than antropogenic-greenhouse-driven. We'll have to bear the consequences of settlements in areas that would normally see flooding every so many thousands of years. Statistically things will be "off". Insurance policies won't cut it. The rich will feel the guilt. The poor the brunt. But all in all, nothing will be all that new under the sun, except for perhaps the opportunity to make people believe certain things , like the reasons for taxing CO2. Wake up!
Down with manipulation, from big oil to otherwise.
Check the reality:
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
Peace,
Coolhead
The planet we inhabit works to restore the natural balance in a very slothlike way. The danger signs we are seeing evidence of today were caused by activities of people not in the last 10 years but more likely 60 or more years ago. Remember when clean air was extinct in all major cities. The other problem is that people are only looking for solutions that combine the saving of the earth with a continuation of our consumerist lifestyles in large cities with the same population levels that we now have. The sad fact is that, the only way that our beautiful planet can survive is for people to have as passive a footprint upon it as all the other species which we share it with. That requires humans to do the same level of activity as the other species. Breeding, Eating, Dying, in small sustainable communities. That is how we came up as a species and that is the only way we will survive. There is no transistion from here to some sort of global utopia whereby the Bankers, The Military and the Pharmaceutical companies become sane and allow all the changes that would be needed. By the way I recommend that people do some research into soy products before promoting it as a health product. Also do some research into the Bankers Manifesto of 1934 and also the Rockefeller family connections to Pharma way back to 1918. Then fast forward to theirs and others influence on the decision making process in the USA today. We all need to allow our minds to be open to every possibility in these times. Fixed unwavering belief systems that follow a strict line are what has led us to this crisis. Religious Beliefs, Militaristic Beliefs,Patriotic Beliefs,Racist Beliefs, Socieoeconomic Beliefs all confine us and divert us from the only important goal which is to ensure the survival of the planet. If we let the planet die, we all die. If we save the planet then at least some of all the species that share the planet will survive to regain the natural balance. Do not forget that we are just one species out of many. We have no greater rights to life. We exist in a predatory world. At its most basic we are something elses prey or they are ours. What we do have is possibly the intellectual ability to stop what we are doing and retreat back to the basics of life. Everything in this world is everyones and everythings business,if we are to survive. A parting thought: The faster we all consume, the faster we all die.
Time to sleep with your neighbors wife, go to that orgy you were always too chicken to go to and run up the credit cards like there is no tomorrow. Ask the citizens of Greenburg Kansas how well going to church every Sunday and clean living and voting for Bush worked out.
God has abandoned us. Those who claim to follow God most loudly appear to be most committed to the destruction of our the very air they breathe.
Personally I'm waiting for everyone else on the planet to change thier behavior FIRST because why should I do jack while the rich and powerful fly back and forth to Hawaii and the sexual-slums of Amsterdam, Thailand and Brazil.
What business is it of mine if the rest of you die?
---Sorry, Just channelling George W. Bush for a second. Ignore all that.----
Google: Terra Preta.
Terra Preta- It's what YOU can do to stop climate change.
I went to the HAARP website and I'm wondering if it is possible that HAARP is disrupting the honeybee guidance systems? We have strong evidence that Navy sonar experiments are disrupting marine mammals' guidance systems (not to mention torturing them).
I grew up near Miami International Airport in the 50s and 60s and remember the skies dark with migrating birds from South America. I remember tons of mosquitoes too!
But the migration now is a fraction of what it was. It's mainly habitat loss at fault, and now with the "no tree left behind" mentality/policy habitat is under serious attack.
I am not against harvesting trees or thinning to the perimeter of wildland/urban interface public lands; it improves forest health and fire safety. I think we should open these areas up for public use with trails leading into the interior of these public lands with a pack it in pack it out policy. THEY ARE YOUR LANDS; THEY BELONG TO ALL OF US.
You cannot conduct good science when you are constantly trying to fix things poising bugs and chopping it up. It needs to go through a natural cycle of regeneration that strengthens the evolution of species. We need to leave it alone and fire is a natural part of that cycle.
Evolution should not be geared to which species survives our pollution the best!
Every school kid should be able to spend time learning a little bit about what it means to observe the natural world. It comes natural to them; it's like a child that learns music activates a part of the brain that would never otherwise be used.
--
HAARP is a series of linked frequency generators checker boarded around the country. It's supposed to be able to affect the weather somehow. For good or bad is unclear; I'd sure like to know more. I remember Taos, NM having a low pitched hum everybody complained about, maybe 8-10 years ago. (Connection?)
Reduce the human population and recycle 100% of industrial and biological waste, or go extinct. The "capitalist" system refuses to do this, so utterly addicted to economic growth. Can "socialism" even think about it? Something new and different is needed - continental networks of eco-tech villages that surround themsleves with miles of healthy wilderness. We must live in peace and balance or the foundation of all our lives will collapse. It has already begun.
It turns out that humans have very little genetic diversity compared to other animals that have been around as long as we have.
The thinking is that our ancestors went through periods when the number of humans was very small and we are descended from a small group of humans that survived some catastrophe(s).
The following link is to an article in the BBC about how possibly only 10,000 humans survived a drought in Africa and that drought may have initiated the migration that caused our species to be found in so many locations world wide.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4505516.stm
some quotes from the article
"Genetic studies suggest modern human society is descended from a group of around 10,000 individuals who lived in East Africa at the time of this crisis."
"Immediately after its end, human populations started to expand rapidly - and many of our ancestors began moving out of Africa and into the Middle East, Asia and Europe."
Driving force
"Scientists are increasingly convinced that tragedies in the deep past have shaped human evolution."
"The intriguing thought is that we owe our existence to a small band of survivors who clung on to life during a crisis of epic proportions or who simply decided they had to move to find water. "
I'm no expert on global warming, only know what I read and see on the news about the subject. This is what i do know for certain, it is what I can see with my eyes.
We live in an area of the southwest, up in the mountains on a 30 acre homestead. We have hundres of oak trees and a small montain spring which flows most of the year. We have thousands of birds and other wildlife in the area. I shoud say, we did have until last year.
Up until the spring of 2006, we could count over 70 different specie of birds in our back yard, not counting the many different specie of humming birds. Last year we counted 21 species and this year it is down to 11. Some of those are just a single bird, no more flocks and so far we have seen four hummers. FOUR, and we used to have hundreds every day.
In addition, no honey bees, NONE! When the oak trees blossomed every spring, they used to be alive with honey bees, not this year.
NO bees, NO acorns.
This all transpired in one year, any chance it has anything {AT ALL} to do with global warming? I'm sure we could get twenty different experts answer that and get twenty different opinions. Oh well, that's what we see in our little isolated part of this world. Something is terribly wrong even if it has nothing to do with the other problem of global warming.
If what NMBill said at 11:52 is not understood by majority then there isn't much hope for a near correction to avoid catastrophe.
We are warned and the best that Republicans can do is stick their heads further into the sand.
Most people just work and go home to MSM TV. I just watched a little over at a friend's house last night; it's about "prize in the sky" type game shows; mindless.
I mentioned gas prices, and got silence from someone who is well aware of what I know. We spent the evening setting up for their son's graduation from H.S. while the TV sat in the corner broadcasting fantasyland.
It's going to take something that affects everybody all at once to wake everybody up. People are so used to just working harder to make ends meet; while the people on the fringe get picked off financially and silently crumble.
We need a major change in our lifestyle and we have to have a vision of what we want when we are met with the inevitable smear campaign.
Gas prices are killing us! This dose of reality alone can start people thinking. Tie that to the "occupation" and that to the deception that exists.
Then bring up solutions, because it's just a negative campaign unless we have an alternative to the problem. The problem is; this is a tiny finite planet; as seen from a jet or from space, would make the green icing on the cake seem micro thin.
From our living rooms the TV pumps out fantasy land! Leading us to believe that that pot of gold will arrive if we just hang in there.
The earth is always in balance, its fixing itself as we speak, we just need to let it do it's thing and find ways to adapt to it's changes.
If we cannot live on the area of land we have developed already than it's a sign that we are not living sustainably. We need to leave the oceans and wild lands heal! We will be the ones out of balance and the problem will naturally be corrected by the great powers of the Earth healing itself. Pay now or pay soon; the choice is OURS!
George Carlin: "Save the Planet Save the Planet… save the planet hell! The planets not going anywhere… WE ARE! She is going to shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
I think every person rich or poor can see that, if they just turn off fantasyland TV.
I challenge Dick Cheney to a duel. After all, Hamilton took the field of honor. The sad thing is, the duopoly can't solve the problem. Without the resolve to take on corporations and SUV's or other gas guzzelers, get ready for the end game, my friends. Life on planet Earth is undergoing a great transformation. And our Earth Mother will shake us off like so many flea's.
dponcy
"What depresses me the most about this very predictable news, is that we all are taking the death of our planet so damn passively. Emailing corrupt politicians, developing less destructive energy, changing our lightbulbs, blah, blah, blah. We should out on the streets bringing this horrible show to an end. Why aren't people rioting?"
I agree...where shall we start our rioting? Let's put our money where our mouths are and do it.
Global warming and all the other problems should be addressed by the people at the grass roots level. This approach empowers the people.
That Haarp site is quite a shocker. I have heard of little of this, just Tesla. I always wondered what happened to his work. I guess thats why people are so stupid in town, no protests, not willing to accept what they know is true, selfish ect. (Time to wear your electro-thermal radiation shielding hats to the ball park, if you don't you might end up like ol' Dick the Lecher over there, he just sold his soul for a dollar again. )
Stupid people! That could be why our country is so "Impaired mentally" compared to other countries. Electro magnetically impaired! That could be why one feels better to just be out of the city or the country. This is the cake we have been looking at, talking about the icing all this time, not seeing what's underneath. The war machine will then try to make us one planetary nation to divide us all and enslave us? Who would we fight then? Civilians...Politicians? The problem is we don't know each other and they are all in bed together.
Well lets just hope Mom feels better after she rolls over to scratch her ass and shake us all to oblivion! Boy what a week on Common Dreams!
Hey, jld, I checked out the HAARP site, too. I'm horrified, but I can't say that I'm surprised. The military is
(a) using DU on the ground (causing babies to be born without eyes!);
(b) testing nuclear bombs under the ground causing god know's what havoc with the underground water supply;
(c) using sonor underneath the water (that beaches whales and does untold damage to aquatic life).
I should have known that they were doing the same in the atmosphere.
1. Am so angry that none of this makes it into the global warming discussions. Why the hell not?! But even if it did, I really do believe that it's too late. The odds are against us.
2. This is bigger than politics. What the military does isn't about politics. The presidents and congresses that funded this stuff over the last 60 years are both Dems and Repubs. This is about the military. The military is an entity that knows only two things - killing and keeping itself going. And that's nothing to do with politics.
Check it out - www.HAARP.net
Please everyone - if you don't yet know about HAARP - please educate yourself about it! www.HAARP.net. I learned about it from the person called allinharmony. The degredation of this planet is due - in large part - to the military!! Yes, we must change our habits. But we absolutely MUST stop the military.
The HAARP Program is run jointly by the US Army and the US Navy (Isn't that scary enough?) and builds on fifty years of military research in the upper atmosphere. I am quoting from the website so please bear with the scientific phrases:
1962: The US military exploded nuclear bombs directly in the upper atmosphere: "one kiloton device, at a height of 60 km and one megaton and one multi-megaton, at several hundred kilometers height. ... These tests seriously disturbed the lower Van Allen Belt ... According to American scientists, it could take many hundreds of years for the Van Allen Belts to destabilize at their normal levels."
1975: "Due to a malfunction, the Saturn V Rocket burned unusually high in the atmosphere, above 300 km (ionosphere). This burn produced a large ionospheric hole ... over an area 1,000 km in radius, and lasted for several hours. It prevented all telecommunications over a large area of the Atlantic Ocean ... Between 1975 and 1981 NASA and the US Military began to design ways to test this new phenomena through deliberate experimentation with the ionosphere." (For the military - what a WAY COOL phenomena! They can CONTROL communication!)
1982: GTE Sylvania Corp. had developed a command control electronic sub-system for the US Air Force ... created with ... a dark beam (not visible) ... Dark beams contribute to the formation of energetic plasma in the atmosphere. ... Some plasma has a different charge than the sun's energy, and accumulates in places where the sun's energy is absent, like the polar regions in the winter. When the polar spring occurs, the sun appears and repels this plasma, contributing to holes in the ozone layer."
1980's - shuttle experiments: "Rocket launches globally numbered about 500 to 600 a year, peaking at 1,500 in 1989. There were many more during the Gulf War. The Shuttle is the largest of the solid fuel rockets ... All solid fuel rockets release large amounts of hydrochloric acid in their exhaust, each Shuttle flight injecting about 75 tons of ozone destroying chlorine into the stratosphere. Those launched since 1992 inject even more ozone-destroying chlorine, about 187 tons, into the stratosphere (which contains the ozone layer)." (Do the math ... just for the decade of the 1980s: 500 launches per year x 75 tons per launch = 375,000 TONS at the minimum. And this was two decades ago!)
1993 - HAARP: It is designed to "understand, simulate and control ionospheric processes that might alter the performance of communication and surveillance systems. ... [T]he project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a devise for repairing the ozone layer."
This is the scariest point of all .. how the impact of military testing in the atmosphere isn't being talked about - and how it will be sold. Go to www.HAARP.net before they take it down, because you know that they will.
Today's DemocracyNow guest, British journalist George Monbiot, claims a 2 degree celsius increase would likely trigger more feedbacks and increase the risk of runaway global warming. He says in order to avoid that 2 degree increase we need a 60% global reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Proportionately that would require a 90% reduction by the U.S.
Can anyone imagine that from the current world leadership?
Senator Gravel of Alaska promotes a direct democracy initiative at www.nationalinitiative.us. It's worth a look. It creates a mechanism by which citizens exercise concurrent jurisdiction with elected representatives.
As the earth warms look for the next species to become dominant:the insects. They don't mind the heat and with the birds dying from West Nile Virus their main preditors will be long gone. New, more virulent strains of viruses will also emerge. They like it warm, too.
lis, I went to your website, it's wonderful and your boys are beautiful. Every action we take spreads like ripples.
paulm, I don't think we're destroying our planet, just making it uninhabitable for ourselves and like species. There are bacteria living in ocean floor hotspots, so nature will always find a way to keep life going. Maybe some intelligence will evolve that can do a better job than we have - without our destructive tendencies. Once we're not here (at least not in significant numbers) to muck it up, who knows how it will turn out. More beautiful than ever? I do feel sad for our children's children. They will feel the pain of our selfishness.
It's too bad we couldn't think like the Native Americans, who always considered their actions in terms of consequences to the seventh generation. I believe the Bible had something to say about that as well.
And from Revelations: Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees. Oops. Three strikes, you're out.
I had a button (which my dog chewed up) that said "Remember, Mother Nature bats last".
What depresses me the most about this very predictable news, is that we all are taking the death of our planet so damn passively. Emailing corrupt politicians, developing less destructive energy, changing our lightbulbs, blah, blah, blah. We should out on the streets bringing this horrible show to an end. Why aren't people rioting?
Oh well, guess I'll post another comment on Common Dreams, instead.
There is no doubt that global warming is on us- and the impacts are likely to be in this generation and much more significant than most global warming models predict;-models "refined" by the need to tone down doom and gloom so as not to affect the "market".
Let's get real, it is the consumer market which is destroying our planet-and not just through global warming. Look around you-at the sealed off earth, the rapid removal of bio-diversity across all species. I often marvel as I fly into another city (distributing CO2 as I go), how remarkably like a cancer on the earth's skin our cities are.
We could all in the industrialised world live comfortably with far less than a third of the things we accumulate around us. Governments need to act NOW to encourage market down-sizing, removal of advertising, create expectations of connection to the real living world, stop wars and tear up roading. NOW.
The earth spent millions of years removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it underground as coal, oil, and gas. We have put a large fraction of it back into the atmosphere in a short span of 200 years... there will be consequences.
I just heard a terrific radio program from the Pacifica Archives about Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring".
It consisted of Carson speaking about the pesticide industry attacks against her and her book, with readings of those very same attacks, by industry flacks and their paid lackeys in medicine and academia.
Man... the more thing change, the more they stay the same! The defenders of DDT in 1962 sound EXACTLY like the global warming naysayers of today.
They challenged her credentials, and then the "science" behind her assertions and then complained that the copius footnotes and research references were added "just to make the book longer".
They ridiculed her supporters as "food faddists, nature worshippers, and hysterics". Then they hysterically predicted that reducing use of pesticides and herbicides would lead to a collapse of the food supply, epidemics of disease and a return to the dark ages.
The produced their own industry-funded "research" to refute her assertions and when that failed to gain acceptance, attacked her for things she never said - just to spread doubt and confusion and delay action. And, of course, they had Agriculture Department officials firmly on their side.
It took ten years to get a ban on DDT through Congress. But if that first generation of eco-activists could do it... so can we.
It's absurd to say that the earth has a defense against climate change, as if cliamte change is bad for it, as if it's something "the earth" needs to guard against, something "it" wants to avoid at all costs. The earth will always be in balance, in every moment. It's just that we & other life forms might die out. New ones will just take over. It's happened many times before & only our arrogance thinks it "shouldn't" happen on out watch. This is the same kind of thinking that says the US should rule humankind indefinitely, because WE have democracy, the gretest system ever! Surely the Romans thought the same thing and where are they now? When the sun burns out & the earth is a cold & dry ash heap it will still be in perfect balance!
karlof,
In school they teach us to get rid of passive language and fluff; but when you get a job in the real world you have to do what the boss says. (Good Point)
Just think of the opportunity in solar panel, solar water heater and wind generation business. (no tornados please)
Trees love carbon dioxide; maybe they will inherit the earth! Check out the chemical reaction of photosynthesis and respiration they are the exact opposite of each other.
We were made for each other!
I tried to write the reaction but it turned into an HTML nightmare.
In Australia we've started a blog called A Year In A Day - we are taking one new personal and one political action a day to show that it's only when you set targets that you get REAL ACTION. We are calling on others to join us by subscribing (you get a daily reminder that people around the world are taking daily actions and you can add any of your actions to our list by commenting). As soon as we get 365 people joining in we are acting and asking for change at the rate of A Year In A Day ... if enough people join and put pressure on government, industry and community, who knows ... we may move ahead a few years in a day. We need to show that enough people care, enough people are willing to make changes and that enough people would be willing to go onto a world war 11 type footing to protect the future for our children.
We're at www.stoplaughing.com.au/wordpress
Please excuse me, but there are some days -- not every day, but some days -- that I'd like to see the human "experiment" simply disappear. I must admit to a large measure of anger at the blind stupidity of "the mass of humanity". Our planet was, in essence, The Garden of Eden, and we damned well have not deserved it. The entity of greatest importance has been "THE ECONOMY", and for that beast, nature was transformed into "resource" for the beast's maw.
Climate change and it's effects were supposed to be felt by people at the end of the century or for the more fashionably open minded, moderate effects were to be detectable by mid century. We grow shocked as we find that what we have been doing...is actually going to affect us. Us? You mean.... us...really? That can't be right! While the right, for some bizarre and inexplicable reason has made preserving even their own future (and economic interests) a political bugaboo, still loudly proclaim the advance of global warming a myth, that must be fought against. We suddenly notice that the unwillingness to believe this problem exists has let it worsen far more than we have believed possible. Like stretching a rubber band but denying that it happens and to prove it isn't happening at all...you let go. It's a shock when that rubber band travels so far when you didn't think it would travel at all. It was supposed to get grim much later. We are shocked...truly shocked that it may get grim...for us instead. Even now we continue to stretch that rubber band but deny we are doing so, counting on a much slower rate of damage to the eco-system to allow us a more leisurely effort to change our habits. Even the fifty years estimate is a long time away. How could it be only twenty or even ten before catastrophe actually affects us? If only we had known ...that it would be our problem? Now we know. What we do...we are doing to us...scary ain't it?
genaman,
Whoa - that soybean-lentil thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green seems kind of mean - whoa.
All I want to do is have a boxing match, or if not that how about this:
Let's have an online debate simulating what would happen if the US House of Representative actually considered H.Res. 333 - Impeach VP.
If this can't happen at Common Dreams, then maybe there is somewhere else more appropriate. Its just an idea, but one that might be helpful.
Ken
send me an e-mail at buffalo_ken@kjh-es.com if you want to discuss this further.....
If you look at the date the movie Soylent Green was suppost to happen. You would find humankind is pretty much on scedule to make Mr. Harris's book No Room No Room and the Movie Soylent Green from scifi to reality.
And we just keep going merrily into oblivian. What more can be said but GO EARTH!get rid of us and start over again.
If you could have heard all the laughs I got over the years mentioning this possibility that Soylent Green just might come true.
No, I am not happy I was right. I never wanted to be right. I lived in hope that we would see our folly and turn things around.
Heck ,even an uneducated claude like me can see things are gettiing worse.
Soylent Green is Tuesday
genaman
You know,
I just contributed $250 to CommonDreams.org.
There are few places I would rather spend what little money I have accumulated over the years.
Peach,
oh I mean,
Peace, everyone,
Ken
H.Res.333 - Im-peach VP (the "d"-man)
Please take a look at:
The Warming Globe and Us
It's More Than CO2
(and the role of vegetarianism)
by Dan Brook and Richard H. Schwartz / May 1st, 2007
Dissident Voice
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/the-warming-globe-and-us
This is not a new idea, but bares repeating ... how about removing our payments for national defence from federal income tax revenues and instead add the cost of defence onto oil and other carbon fuels imported into the country as for example in a gasoline tax?
This can me modified and expanded for example to include a tax on all resources and manufactured items imported into the U.S. which involved releasing carbon into the environment.
For one who watches these developments closely, this isn't any surprise. What really gets me is the language used to report these developments--it's almost always passive, not active. Take the third paragraph, for example: "As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilizing the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it."
Try this version: The result is atmospheric CO2 levels will rise faster and cause temperatures to warm quicker than previously anticipated. To stop further warming, CO2 levels must be stabilized; with the failure of this key sink, the task becomes harder, and the need for the world community to urgently agree on mitigation increases.
I'm sure all the climate models underestimate the damage, and we are, in fact, 30 years away from extinction. But by then of course, most of those in charge will dead anyway, so they probably don't give a rat's ass.
I suppose we will never figure this out, but I have an idea:
I challenge Dick Cheney to a boxing match!!!!!!!
If I win, government leaders need to support education, with special emphasis on education about ecology & impeachment proceedings need to commence (against the "d"-man obviously);
If I loose, I promise to stop calling for impeachment and of course, if they want to take me away and put me in some sort of prison, well I suppose they will do that won't they....
Ah the price that must be paid.....
buffalo_ken
"tongue-sort-of-in-cheek"
After 9/11 Mitch Daniels explained to Bush what he now could get away with and Bush said "I just won the Trifecta". Wrong Trifecta. The real one is the worst foreign policy disaster in US history(Iraq), fiddling while Earth burned (global warming) and driving the US economy over a cliff with tax cuts, deficit spending and a defense budget larger than the entire rest of the world. All this while ignoring the louder and louder warnings from scientists about the Earth heating up. But hey, he's not all alone here. How many Americans are worried? And why are all these warnings coming from foreign news sources? Usually the Independent or Guardian from the UK?
What most concerns me, having followed the climate news for over 10 years is that every year a new report starts out saying things are changing faster than predicted. But recently, the rate of reporting the acceleration of change is also accelerating. We're in for stormy times. But our Pentagon is on top of it! When the drowning starving masses come stampeding to our doorstep we'll be ready for them. Unfortunately, some of them may be some of us. Oh well. collateral damage.